Website Privacy Statement

The Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal (VOCAT) values the privacy of every individual's personal information and health information. VOCAT is committed to protecting the information it collects and uses by compliance with its obligations under the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 and the Health Records Act 2001 (Vic). Protecting your privacy and your personal and health information is an important aspect of the way we create, organise and implement our activities online and offline.

This Website Privacy Statement applies to this website which is operated by Court Services Victoria under the domain name www.vocat.vic.gov.au ('website'). This Website Privacy Statement explains how your personal information (being information capable of identifying you as an individual) will be treated as you access and interact with this website. The practices outlined in this Website Privacy Statement are subject to any rights we may have to handle personal information in accordance with law.

Collection of your personal information

The personal information we collect via this website includes:

• the content of any electronic forms you submit via this website, requesting us to provide services or information, or take actions
• information submitted if you participate in an online survey
• any messages or comments you submit to us via this website or to email addresses displayed on this website, which may include personal information such as name, email address and telephone number.

Use and disclosure of your personal information

You can browse this website anonymously, without disclosing your personal information.

You may choose to provide us with information in the form of feedback or questions.

In addition to providing our services to you and carrying out your requests, we may use or disclose personal information that we collect about you for purposes including the following:

• for the purpose that we have collected the information
• purposes related to our research, planning, product and service development, security and testing
• purposes connected with the operation, administration, development or enhancement of this website
• where we suspect that fraud or unlawful activity has been, is being or may be engaged in
• any other purposes required or authorised by law.

We may share personal information within Court Services Victoria and with third parties. The types of third parties to whom we may disclose that personal information includes our service providers who assist us in providing this website and our products and services such as organisations who provide archival, auditing, professional advisory, banking, mailhouse, delivery, recruitment, call centre, technology, research, utility and security services. We may also disclose your personal information to third parties acting on your behalf, for example your solicitor or interpreter.

If you have made an online application, your application will be forwarded to the appropriate Court Services Victoria unit or agency and any other third parties to whom your application relates or who can assist in processing your application.

Web Statistics Data Collection

Pages on this site are coded with Google Analytics software. This is transparent to you as the user, as the software makes use of an invisible image at the bottom of the web page. This software stores a cookie in your browser and sends information to Google Analytics. This enables Google Analytics to track the number of unique visitors to the site. In no way does it identify users personally.

We do not and will not marry any data collected by Google Analytics with any personal information.

Security

We have implemented technology and security policies, rules and measures to protect the personal information that we have under our control. However, you should be aware that there are risks in transmitting information across the internet. So whilst we strive to protect such information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information transmitted to us online and individuals do so at their own risk. Once any personal information comes into our possession, we will take reasonable steps to protect that information from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. If you are concerned about conveying sensitive material to us over the internet, you might prefer to contact us by telephone or mail. We will remove personal information from our system where it is no longer required (except where archiving is required).

Feedback form, information request form and email

We may preserve the content of any feedback form, information request form, email or other electronic message that we receive. Any personal information contained in that message will only be used or disclosed in ways set out in this Website Privacy Statement. We will not use that information to add you to a mailing list without your consent.

If you subscribe to our updates using RSS we will only use this service to provide updates to our content.

Links to external websites

This Website Privacy Statement does not extend beyond this website. When following links to other sites from this website, we recommend that you read the privacy statement of that site to familiarise yourself with its privacy practices.

Cookies

Like many sites, this website may use cookies from time to time.

Cookies are small data files that a website is able to place on a user's hard drive to record aspects of that user's experience of the website. For example, we may use cookies to record that a user visited a particular section of the website, that their browsing software was a particular version or to ensure that online applications and transactions do not require you to re-input information when moving between web pages. In this way, cookies can improve the operation of the website, and make the experience more efficient, more enjoyable or more personalised. Importantly, in depositing information on a user's computer and referring to it later in the same session (sessional) or on a subsequent visit (persistent), cookies do not need to identify the user or record any personal information.

The default settings of browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer may allow some or all cookies, but users can easily take steps to erase cookies from their hard-drive, block all cookies, or receive a warning before a cookie is stored. However, some parts of sites may not function fully for users that disallow cookies.